Breast cancer causes the death of 40,000 women in the USA and 410,000 women in the world annually.1 Despite advances in the treatment of the disease, 20% to 30% of patients with early breast cancers will experience relapse with distant metastatic disease.2 In those patients, metastasis is the main cause of death. Patients with basal tumors have increased risk of metastasis and lower survival rate.3, 4 Kennecke et al. studied 3,726 breast cancer patients and reported that the basal tumors have higher frequencies of metastases and reduced time from identification of metastases to death compared to that of patients with luminal A or B tumors.4 The absence of AR, ER, and HER-2 commonly found in basal breast tumors5 means that they are unlikely to respond to hormone therapies or HER-2 targeted therapies. Currently, chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery are the only choices for patients with basal breast cancers, but all demonstrate poor outcomes.6 The need for a specific targeted therapy for basal breast cancer remains urgent.